Across the literary pages | 13 June 2011

The literary world is paying homage to Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 96. Here is an excerpt from the Times’ obituary (£). 

‘The curtailment of his formal education was compensated by his intellectual curiosity and by the civilising influence of his mother who introduced him to the pleasures of art and literature. His gifts did not necessarily fit him for regimental duties or reconcile him to the restrictions of peacetime soldiering. His inclinations were rather those of an 18th-century patrician eager to scan the broader horizons offered by the Grand Tour. And so, shortly before his 19th birthday instead of joining the Army, he sailed to Rotterdam and set out on foot for Constantinople.

That solitary trek across a Europe in the mid-1930s developed his linguistic talent — already fluent in French and German, he added Bulgarian, Greek and Romanian to his languages — and also his ability to hit it off with people of various nationalities and walks of life.